Death too hath come with Sorrow. Sorrow enough to-day Brings Death with her to-morrow, Unwelcome guest, to stay With us. If I be sick I know not, care not, and The night is very thick; My tract of toil is sand. Hated the daily toil; Hated the toil I loved; Daily the worthless soil Sinks back as it is moved. II I seized the hands of Grief; I would not thus be thrown; But Death came like a thief Behind and seized my own I held debate with Pain, And half persuaded her; Then came the utterance plain Of Death, the Answerer. ‘Cryest thou so before Thou sufferest?’ he said; ‘Wait yet a little more And thou shalt cry indeed.’ Sorrow so darkly veiled Will take my hand and lead. O Wisdom, thou hast failed, And Sorrow, she must lead; And Death with her. He goes Before and readeth plain The painful list of those Dear ones whom he hath slain. They fail, they fall, they sink, Torn from the treacherous sands; The deeps of death they drink And reach out madden’d hands. A mist across the deep Of future and of past, The rock whereon we creep, The present we hold fast, Visible alone. Around, The rolling wreathes of fog; The unseen surges sound; Dead eyes are in the fog. We have no airy scope; We are not things that fly; We are but things that grope From hand to hand and die. Not many friends, O God, Ours, and so far, so dear. So far that less manhood, Losing, can nobly bear The loss, as, having, more Must love. What bitter loss To us so distant. For No dying word to us; No hand in ours; not even To see the well-known spot, The room, the chair is given; To visit the sacred plot. * * * III O Lily that to the lips Pal’st at the name of death, And with’rest in eclipse, And yieldest a sickly breath: And Rose that sheddest thy leaves And tremblest as they fall,— Know ye what power bereaves And takes the sum of all? Now slowly perishing Down to the leafless core, Ye die; no lovely thing; A heart, and nothing more. IV If we could think that death As surely as we dream, To us who dwell beneath The summit of supreme Prospective—Love and Peace— Will open Heav’nly sweets; It would be wise to cease, If ceasing thus completes; Unless the further faith, Malefiant power pursue In death those who in death Have hoped to struggle thro’. V The tropic night is husht With hateful noises—hark! The fluttering night-moth crusht By reptiles in the dark